Page 4 of Cashmere Ruin

“He hasn’t stopped searching, you know,” Yuri mutters around a mouthful of kung pao chicken. “He sent out another party today, not too far from here.”

“But not here?” I venture.

“But not here.”

Of course he hasn’t. All this time, Yuri’s been covering for me—overseeing the search, steering people away from the motel.

There’s no way I would’ve made it four weeks under Matvey’s radar otherwise.

“How is he?” I ask, unable to keep my mouth shut.

“How do you think?” Yuri snaps, but without any real bite. If anything, he just seems sad. “He’s torn up inside, April. Hasn’t slept a wink since it happened. Since…” He lets the sentence hang in the air, unfinished.

“Since you helped me run,” I finish for him.

I regret those words immediately. Yuri’s face tightens, darkens. His eyes fill with pain, with a thousand conflicting feelings at once.

“Why did you?” I finally ask. “Help me run?”

I remember it like it was yesterday: the hospital, the birth, the pain. The blood on the sheets and the phone in my hand.

“Yuri. It’s me. I need your help.”

It takes a while for him to speak. When he finally does, his voice is tight, too. “Matvey wasn’t…” He hesitates. “He wasn’t his best self back then. I can only imagine what that meant for you.”

He told me he’d lock me up in a cage and never let another man near me, I almost spit, but I manage to stop myself. Even if Matvey said those things, I can’t imagine he fully meant them. Or that he meant them the way I took them. And if he did…

Either way, Yuri doesn’t need to hear it.

“He married Petra,” I say instead. “He has a legitimate heir on the way. He didn’t need me. Didn’t needus.”

“Maybe he did,” Yuri mutters, expression unreadable. “Maybe he needed you more than ever. Maybe he still does.”

I don’t reply to that.

It’s pointless anyway: I made my choice. Ileft.There’s no coming back from that.

Not with someone like Matvey Groza.

“Wanna hold her?” I ask instead.

It’s one of the best moments of the day—getting to drop my baby in Yuri’s arms. Watching his face go white and red at the same time, like he has no idea where his hands even go.

But he’s been learning. “She really likes you,” I say.

Yuri winces. “She likes everyone. She just wants something warm to snuggle into.”

I watch his gruff face slip into a smile and I melt.He looks so much like Matvey.

“You’re going to be a great dad one day, you know?”

Yuri chokes on his next bite.

I can’t help it then—I laugh. I laugh with all I have. Things might be rough now. They might even be terrible. I’m at the lowest I’ve ever been, with no one to talk to but my daughter’s spiritually teenaged uncle, and yet…

And yet, somehow, I think it’ll be okay.

No,I know it will be okay.

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